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Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Nov 25, 2011

Sweet dreams of a childhood winter warmer

The mournful chant of the ishi-yakiimo-ya or stone-roasted sweet-potato seller advertising his wares is a cherished part of the late fall and winter landscape in Japan. The sing-song chant is often accompanied by the thin, penetrating tone of a whistle, which seems to echo the sound of the wind. Braving...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 24, 2011

Lack of leadership hobbles Egypt's revolution

The man who taught me to sacrifice my heart for Egypt is dead," said Vivian Magdi, mourning her fiancé. Michael Mosad was killed in the Maspiro area Oct. 9, when an armored vehicle hit him during a protest called to condemn an attack on an Egyptian Church in the southern Aswan region. The protest left...
COMMENTARY
Nov 22, 2011

Guess who's suddenly inviting Uncle Sam to dinner?

Real-life diplomacy reveals, as Lord Palmerston, twice British prime minister (1855-8, 1859-65), famously put it: "We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow." Over the decades the Palmerston Principle...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Nov 20, 2011

Sarobetsu's a stopover to count on for wonders

Gray predawn light suffuses the eastern horizon before crawling slowly across the landscape — but not before a rich clamoring reaches my ears.
Reader Mail
Nov 17, 2011

Blithe rhetoric toward disaster

I must condemn the Nov. 10 Washington Post article by Nicholas Eberstadt, "Five myths about global population," in the strongest language possible for its irresponsible position on the problem of the burgeoning human population. Such bland denial of the wolf that is at everyone's door borders upon insanity....
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 17, 2011

Time to ban world's deadliest recreational drug

U.S. President Barack Obama's doctor confirmed last month that the president no longer smokes. At the urging of his wife, Michelle Obama, the president first resolved to stop smoking in 2006, and has used nicotine replacement therapy to help him. If it took Obama, a man strong-willed enough to aspire...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 17, 2011

Language imperialism — 'democracy' in China

If you are an American or European citizen, chances are you've never heard about shengren, minzhu and wenming. If one day you promote them, you might even be accused of culture treason.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 13, 2011

Erotica to celebrate and educate

The word shunga ("spring picture"), used to identify woodblock prints that portray erotic subjects, is not simply a euphemism for the awakening of natural urges. Rather, as both these books inform us, it is an abbreviation of a longer Chinese name, shunkyu higa ("secret pictures from the Spring Palace"),...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 12, 2011

Modern Greece built on myth

Greece is the cradle of democracy, but as the world has seen recently, a financial crisis is no time to put important questions to the people. Prime Minister George Papandreou's proposed referendum on the country's loan deal with the European Union, called off quickly after intense international opposition,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 11, 2011

'Contagion' / 'Moneyball'

Cinema imagines the apocalypse on a regular basis, touching on everything from Mayan calendar-related polar shifts to the ever-popular walking dead. Few films, however, dare to deal with scenarios that could actually happen; that's what makes Steven Soderbergh's "Contagion," which looks at a deadly global...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 11, 2011

Sleeping Beauty

Director: Julia Leigh
COMMENTARY
Nov 11, 2011

Two days that shook the CIS

On Oct. 18-19, eight of 11 members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) — gathering in St. Petersburg for its annual session — accepted a proposal from Russian Prime Minister and returning President Vladimir Putin to establish a free trade zone, thus taking a decisive step toward a Eurasian...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 10, 2011

Five myths about global population

The world's population hit 7 billion people at the end of last month, according to United Nations estimates, launching another round of debates about "overpopulation," the environment and whether more people means more poverty.
COMMENTARY
Nov 8, 2011

America's troubling support for oil-rich Islamist regimes

When Libya's interim government announced the "liberation" of the country Oct. 23, it declared that a system based on the Islamic Sharia, including polygamy, will replace the secular dictatorship that Moammar Gadhafi ran for 42 years.
COMMENTARY
Nov 7, 2011

Asian leader receives coveted American award

They honored the controversial, though increasingly appreciated, Asian statesman Lee Kuan Yew at the historic Ford Theater in Washington recently, and I wish I had been there.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 6, 2011

Lessons of loss and healing

This is a haunting saga, brilliantly told, about the 1985 crash of a Japan Airlines flight in the mountains of remote Gunma that claimed 521 lives. It is a gripping tale that explores what happened and why while probing the human tragedies that have unfolded since that fateful day. At the footer of each...
CULTURE / Books
Nov 6, 2011

Words for all seasons

THE UNDYING DAY: Poems by Hans Brinckmann. Trafford Publishing, 2011, 131pp., $14.50 (paperback) In person, Hans Brinckmann is a dapper European gent with the patrician manner of the well-practised host or master of ceremonies. Reading this book of time-seasoned verse, one suspects that he would be equally...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 4, 2011

Taxation alone won't save Japan from its public debts

Jun Azumi has joined the chorus of those promising the imminent prospect of a rise in Japan's consumption tax. As finance minister, one would think — hope, perhaps pray — that Azumi should know what he is talking about.
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Nov 1, 2011

Ganbatte and gaman stifle debate, hinder recovery

Nuclear debate discouraged Re: "Japan needs less ganbatte, more genuine action" by Debito Arudou (Just Be Cause, Oct. 4):
CULTURE / Books
Oct 30, 2011

Hope found in despair of Japanese POW camp

VICTORY IN DEFEAT: The Wake Island Defenders in Captivity, by Gregory J.W. Urwin. Naval Institute Press, 2010, 478 pp., $38.95 (hardcover) An American solder mused, "We were amazed. We had always been told that [the Japanese] were inferior people. We was amazed at how well they were bombing."
LIFE / Food & Drink
Oct 28, 2011

Pig in Japan: the nation's most popular meat

The most popular type of meat by far in Japan is pork. Nearly as much pork is consumed as chicken and beef combined. It is particularly popular in Okinawa, Kyushu, and the Kanto area. My mother was born in Saitama Prefecture in the 1940s, and she doesn't remember eating beef except as a very special...
Reader Mail
Oct 23, 2011

China's ruthless water strategy

Brahma Chellaney's insightful piece on the rise of China as Asia's hydro-hegemon (Oct. 19) brings out China's resource-grab strategy.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 23, 2011

Post-Fukushima, 'they' can no longer be trusted — if ever they could

Every year when I was a child, my parents would take my brother and me from our Los Angeles home to Las Vegas on vacation. Back then in the 1950s, Vegas was still a family-oriented holiday destination. Dad would drop a few bucks at the crap table while the rest of us basked in the sun.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 23, 2011

Documenting disaster

THE TOHOKU EARTHQUAKE and Tsunami, the Fukushima Nuclear Reactor, and How the World's Media Reported Them, by Eric Johnston. The Japan Times, 2011, 96 pp., ¥1,260 (paperback) Seven months after Japan's devastating March 11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters, the jury remains out on media reporting...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 20, 2011

What is in store for Russian Asia?

When the Soviet Union disintegrated, a large number of ethnic Russians and other Russian-speaking and Russian-cultured peoples remained outside the borders of the Russian Federation — creating, in the short run, many acute and complicated problems but, in the long run, eventually facilitating a revival...
Reader Mail
Oct 20, 2011

Resourceful China sets example

In regard to Brahma Chellaney's Oct. 19 article, "China's unparalleled rise as a hydro-hegemon," China has set a template for holistic development of natural resources that its peers would do well to emulate.
COMMENTARY
Oct 19, 2011

China's unparalleled rise as a hydro-hegemon

International discussion about China's rise has focused on its increasing trade muscle, growing maritime ambitions and expanding capacity to project military power. One critical issue, however, usually escapes attention: China's rise as a hydro-hegemon with no modern historical parallel.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 16, 2011

Don't look back, Tohoku: It's time to look far beyond the Japanese box

Iam just back from a five-day journey around Iwate Prefecture in Tohoku with an NHK TV crew.

Longform

Figure skater Akiko Suzuki was once told her ideal weight should be 47 kilograms, a number she now admits she “naively believed.” This led to her have a relationship with food that resulted in her suffering from anorexia.
The silent battle Japanese athletes fight with weight